Dylan Guenther put in plenty of 'underground' work to hone his blistering shot, and NHL goalies – plus their goalposts – are paying the price. Now, he's out to add other dimensions to his already-dangerous game.
By Jared Clinton, features writer
In another life – not this one and probably not the next one, either – maybe Dylan Guenther would have explored a life in the trades.
That he was born and raised in Edmonton means Guenther hails from a true blue-collar city, one where the hometown big-league outfit pays homage to the roughnecks who make a living in Alberta’s oil fields.
He grew up in a place where there’s respect for those whose working hours don’t follow a typical 9-to-5 and an appreciation for the sweat they put into their craft.
In this life, though, Guenther’s vocation is less wrench and more wrist shot, and he charted his path to the NHL not by way of construction but destruction. The basement of the Guenther family home tells that story.
For Guenther, as with many kids who grew up in frigid winter climates, the basement was his arena away from the arena. It was the concrete rink where a kid with NHL aspirations curled and dragged around structural posts and worked on his shot while tucked away from prairie winters.
But in a much more literal sense – and, really, this bears repeating – it was also the basement of his family home.
No matter how much whimsy one paints it with, then, it must be accepted that Guenther’s subterranean shooting gallery came with certain realities, such as playing host to essential arteries that keep a home ticking.
And when a kid who grows up to have an elite release and the kind of one-timer that beats world-class goaltenders clean spends countless hours repeatedly ripping six-odd ounces of rubber in the same proximity as delicate household infrastructure, there are bound to be casualties. Many, many casualties.
“Honestly, the basement is wrecked because of it,” Guenther said. “I don’t even know what the pipes above do or whatever, but they’re all dented, and they’ve fallen off. It’s honestly wrecked. If my parents want to do the basement, they’ll probably just end up moving instead. It would kind of be a process to put it back together.”
It appears, too, that while you can take the kid out of his unfinished basement, you can’t take the pipe-denting out of the kid.
Since entering the NHL four seasons ago, Guenther has rung up iron 36 times, including denting crossbars more than every other skater not named Artemi Panarin or Nick Suzuki.
And while that’s been awful news for goaltenders’ skinny red friends and the big-league arena staffs who’ve had to do some post-game paint jobs, it’s been great news for the masked men who’ve stared down the Utah Mammoth right winger’s shots.
In all, that’s three dozen times the goaltending fraternity has been saved from watching Guenther blow the puck past them – a welcome result given the other 91 times he’s found pay dirt since breaking into the league.
There really is no doubt, either, that Guenther’s natural goal-scoring ability has been his calling card. It was what put him on the map in youth hockey, what caught the eye of scouts when he was tearing up the WHL with the Edmonton Oil Kings and what paved the way for his rapid climb from prized prospect to top-line talent.
In truth, however, it might not have been until this past season that Guenther really – and in the minds of some, finally – reached his full potential. And in large part, that’s due to hitting an important plateau: 40 goals.
The career-best scoring season made him the first 40-goal man in Mammoth history. And while the histories of Utah and Arizona are separate for NHL record-keeping purposes, if one were to draw a line back to the Coyotes, he’s the team’s first player to net 40 since Keith Tkachuk in 1997-98 – five years before Guenther was even born, for those scoring at home.
“I was eyeing it down the stretch; I won’t lie,” he said. “I had like 25 or 26 goals at the break and was playing well, and I have a mental coach, and we were just talking and setting goals, and I said, ‘I want to hit 40. I gotta get hot here.’ My previous career-high was 27, so I still wanted to hit that and get that out of the way. But I stuck to it.”
Ultimately, the milestone marker came with three games remaining in the Mammoth season. And while it did signify Guenther arriving as one of the NHL’s elite goal-scoring threats, it also saw the 23-year-old deliver on expectations.
In one sense, those expectations were born out of the yearly pre-season prognostication that Guenther would be among the NHL’s breakout scorers.
That was true when he was named as a potential surprise rookie after he made the Coyotes out of camp in 2022-23. It was true again when he got called up from the AHL during the 2023-24 campaign. And it was truer yet after the franchise closed up shop in Arizona and opened anew in Utah in 2024-25.
But the expectations were also part and parcel with the mega-millions contract Guenther signed in September 2024. At the time he put pen to paper, Guenther was 21 with just 78 NHL games under his belt and was only some eight months removed from playing down on the farm.
Yet the Mammoth – then known as the far-more nondescript Utah Hockey Club – ponied up a max-term deal worth north of $57.1 million to lock Guenther up for the next eight seasons.
Guenther became the first Mammoth player to hit the 40-goal mark (Rob Gray-Imagn Images)In the eyes of some, the pact, especially given Guenther’s then-limited CV, was a calculated risk and a source of pressure for Guenther to live up to his cap hit. Both then and now, Guenther saw it otherwise.
“I felt like I earned it, honestly, even though I hadn’t played that much,” he said. “I was confident in my abilities and my teammates would allow me to be the player I am and instill confidence in me. Our leaders are super good.
At a young age, it can be intimidating coming into a dressing room and stuff, but the leadership was great, allowing guys to be themselves and giving you the freedom to do the things that you’re good at – coaching staff, management and the players, too. So there wasn’t a ton of pressure at all.”
If anything, Guenther added, that management was not just willing but excited about committing to him as a franchise cornerstone worked in his favor. It boosted his confidence and made him hungry to deliver.
The relationships and bonds he’s built with the organization, first in Arizona and now in Utah, have helped him do exactly that. Notably, he points to longtime Coyotes and now-Mammoth teammates Lawson Crouse and Clayton Keller as two people who’ve driven him to be the best version of himself.
That best version, and the version upon which Guenther hopes to continue to build, is one who has evolved away from the puck by becoming a more fiery forechecker with a better stick in the defensive zone.
That’s evident in the way he threw his weight around last season. Though modest, he was more physical on a per-game hit rate than in any of his prior NHL campaigns.
And his continued development has also seen Guenther begin to manufacture an identity – and not as the archetypical triggerman. Instead, Guenther sees himself as a player with pace who thrives on give-and-go hockey, keeping the puck alive in the offensive zone and with a willingness to do less-glamorous goal-scoring work.
“This year, I tried to get to the net a little bit more and tried to get inside a bit more,” he said. “And even if I didn’t score that shift or that time, it would open up other space for me. When you look at the best goal-scorers in the league, they’re super diverse, and they score in different ways. That’s something I have to do, too.”
If he can build on his true breakout campaign, the Mammoth are bound to benefit in a big way, as has already been apparent. In a season in which Utah took a step toward legitimacy as an up-and-coming force in the Western Conference, Guenther’s emergence as a full-fledged first-rate scorer was an undercurrent.
And him continuing on this trajectory can only serve to take the Mammoth to greater heights.
Utah took the eventual Western Conference-champion Vegas Golden Knights to within two sudden-death goals of elimination, and the additions of Vincent Trocheck and Anders Lee, not to mention bringing MacKenzie Weegar aboard at last season’s trade deadline, are a statement of intent.
But in Guenther’s mind, when it comes to his personal game and the club as a whole, the message has to be the same: don’t be satisfied.
“We’ve taken steps, and it’s important to keep doing that,” he said. “Nothing is given in this league. Sixteen teams made the playoffs in 2025, and only nine made it again in 2026. Florida didn’t even make it. They had a couple of injuries, but nothing is given, so it’s important for us not to be complacent.
"Just remember how much work and how hard it was to get there. That’s something important.”
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This article appeared in The Hockey News' 2026-27 Yearbook And Fantasy Guide.
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